What causes "Invalid user" in RocketChat/Rocket.Chat?

Verify the exact username first: GET /api/v1/users.info?username=

RocketChat/Rocket.Chat · error · MeteorError

error-invalid-user

error-invalid-user

Error message

Invalid user

What it means

LivechatEnterprise.addMonitor looks up the given username in the Users collection to promote that user to livechat-monitor. If no user matches, it throws Meteor error error-invalid-user with method livechat:addMonitor.

Solutions

Verify the exact username first: GET /api/v1/users.info?username=<name>
Copy the username from the user's profile to avoid casing/whitespace mistakes
Create the user account before trying to make it a monitor

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

const user = await Users.findOneByUsername(username, { projection: { _id: 1, roles: 1 } });
if (!user) {
	// reject early with a clear 'username not found' message
}
await LivechatEnterprise.addMonitor(username);

Try / catch

try {
	await LivechatEnterprise.addMonitor(username);
} catch (err) {
	if ((err as Meteor.Error)?.error === 'error-invalid-user') {
		// show 'user not found' for the supplied username
	} else {
		throw err;
	}
}

Prevention

Use autocomplete on existing usernames instead of free-text entry
Trim whitespace and match exact casing when passing usernames
Re-validate usernames when renaming users anywhere in the workspace

When it happens

Trigger: Calling livechat:addMonitor (Meteor method or REST /api/v1/livechat/monitors.add) with a username that does not exist, is misspelled, or differs in casing/whitespace.

Common situations: Frontend sending a stale username after the user was renamed or deleted; scripts referencing removed accounts; copy-paste with trailing spaces.

Understand the failure class

Background: "User not found", "Invalid user", and "does not exist": what missing-user lookup errors mean across Rocket.Chat, LiteLLM, Phabricator, rustfs, and pnpm — this error's family across 10 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of RocketChat/Rocket.Chat@b2c16d5842 (2026-08-18). Data as JSON: /api/errors/1f2cd73f6272996a. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at apps/meteor/ee/server/lib/omnichannel/LivechatEnterprise.ts:21

import { Users, OmnichannelServiceLevelAgreements, LivechatTag, LivechatUnitMonitors, LivechatUnit } from '@rocket.chat/models';
import { getUnitsFromUser } from '@rocket.chat/omni-core-ee';
import { Match, check } from 'meteor/check';
import { Meteor } from 'meteor/meteor';

import { updateSLAInquiries } from './Helper';
import { removeSLAFromRooms } from './SlaHelper';
import { callbacks } from '../../../../server/lib/callbacks';
import { addUserRolesAsync } from '../../../../server/lib/roles/addUserRoles';
import { removeUserFromRolesAsync } from '../../../../server/lib/roles/removeUserFromRoles';

export const LivechatEnterprise = {
	async addMonitor(username: string) {
		const user = await Users.findOneByUsername<Pick<IUser, '_id' | 'username' | 'roles'>>(username, {
			projection: { _id: 1, username: 1, roles: 1 },
		});

		if (!user) {
			throw new MeteorError('error-invalid-user', 'Invalid user', {
				method: 'livechat:addMonitor',
			});
		}

		if (!(await addUserRolesAsync(user._id, ['livechat-monitor']))) {
			throw new MeteorError('error-adding-monitor-role', 'Error adding monitor role', {
				method: 'livechat:addMonitor',
			});
		}

		return user;
	},

	async removeMonitor(username: string) {
		const user = await Users.findOneByUsername<Pick<IUser, '_id'>>(username, {
			projection: { _id: 1 },
		});

View on GitHub (pinned to b2c16d5842)